About TUI UK&I

TUI is the UK’s leading travel brand, taking over six million holidaymakers away each year.

The challenge

Travel planning can be stressful, especially for travellers with access needs. When choosing the perfect overseas holiday, having accurate and relevant accessibility information is key. Accessibility of the physical environment can really differ from country to country: what might be considered “adapted” in Europe might not be so in USA. Travelers need to rely on the hotel’s accessibility details being available before booking, which isn’t always the case.

The project

TUI partnered with AccessAble – experts in creating Detailed Access Guides which tell you about a venue’s accessibility using facts, figures, and photographs. TUI tasked AccessAble with running accessibility surveys at 200 of their most popular hotels. They then created Detailed Access Guides so that customers with access needs have everything they need before booking and can feel more confident when choosing their holiday. This is a ground-breaking partnership and the first of kind for overseas hotels.

By harnessing the expertise and well-established name of AccessAble, TUI customers and colleagues servicing customers can be reassured that the Access Guides contain accurate information. The user experience is simple and effective: a mixture of high-quality photography and detailed text, divided by hotel zones.

TUI has moved away from labels for accessibility. They know that the true experts are customers themselves, so the decision as to whether a hotel is accessible or not must rely on the customer making an informed decision based on accurate and up-to-date information. TUI’s job is simply to make it the booking experience easier, by providing straightforward access to the Access Guides.

In addition to the Detailed Access Guides, TUI have made some other key achievements in accessibility this year, including:

• Enabling online booking of adapted rooms with instant confirmation in some hotels. Customers can check the layout and facilities of these rooms prior to booking by reading the Detailed Access Guides produced by AccessAble.
• Establishing a dedicated Assisted Travel Team in their contact centre. This team includes 70 full time agents with specialist training and knowledge to help customers with access needs find and tailor their perfect holiday.
• Creation of a new Assisted Travel with TUI page, packed with advice, tips and recommendations for customers with access needs.
• Partnering with Sign Live who provide interpreting services for British Sign Language users via video relay allowing BSL customers to communicate with the Assisted Travel Team.
• Providing extra training opportunities for colleagues across the business to raise their disability awareness. This includes airport and aircraft visits, Neurodiversity training and Deaf awareness.

The result

Since implementing this work, TUI have seen an increase in both Accessible Holiday bookings and the prevalence of disability and access needs amongst their customers. Also, their Assisted Travel team have consistently achieved high customer satisfaction scores.

TUI have been finalists in the “Accessible Travel” category in both the TTG Travel Awards 2023 and The Globe Travel Awards 2024, the only non-specialised Tour Operator to have been nominated in these categories.

Going forward

TUI will be adding another 200 hotels to the list, making it to 400 Detailed Access Guides by the end of the year. They’re also committed to taking the learnings from the accessibility surveys and feedback from the usage of the Access Guides to the next level by creating a feedback loop with Hotel Partners that enables them to transform their units, so they are more accessible to everyone.